NCIS: Los Angeles ratings were steady if unremarkable on Nov. 3 as Season 11 continued forward. See the latest NCIS: Los Angeles numbers.
The presence of two high-profile guest stars didn’t boost NCIS: Los Angeles ratings this week, though the CBS crime drama continued to be decent.
Sunday’s episode “A Bloody Brilliant Plan” started a half-hour later than usual because of CBS’s Sunday NFL football coverage running long, and in certain markets it also competed against more NFL football on NBC.
As a result, the numbers for the season’s sixth episode were not spectacular.
The installment drew in 5.55 million live viewers, down from the previous Sunday’s audience of 5.98 million (-0.43, or a loss of 430,000).
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That meant that NCIS: Los Angeles stayed within the Top 10 broadcast TV shows on Sunday night, but it ended up toward the bottom—ranked eighth in total audience.
It’s also CBS’s second-lowest ranked show on the night; only the final season of Madam Secretary is being watched by less people live (at 4.23 million).
Compared to other networks, though, the show is still over-performing. Other than football, the episode defeated its direct competitors; the closest runner-up was ABC‘s reality show Shark Tank, which didn’t even reach the 3.5 million mark. So while Los Angeles is struggling by the high standards of CBS, it’s still better than what’s on other channels.
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Amongst adults 18-49, “A Bloody Brilliant Plan” lost almost 15 percent of that audience, to drop to a 0.6 share. That sent it tumbling to 12th place out of the 21 shows that were on broadcast TV this Sunday.
It’s clear that NCIS: Los Angeles Season 11 is having a hard time attracting viewers in that critical adults 18-49 group, but the entire franchise tends to skew older in terms of audience, so it’s not necessarily an uncommon problem.
Season 11 continues next week with another episode, and the series will have another chance to find its appeal to that important slice of audience—and to gain back some of the viewers it lost this time around.